


Two Souls

by PoorYorick



Series: Life [2]
Category: Alien: Covenant
Genre: (kind of), F/M, Semi-Public Sex, references to past non-con, talk on consent issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 23:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11588703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorYorick/pseuds/PoorYorick
Summary: Sequel to Life (It's For The Living) but can be read on its own:Living in their cabin by the lake with Daniels, Walter notices worrying changes within himself.





	Two Souls

 

0

 

“You never talk about yourself,” Daniels mused, while making small pencil marks onto the wooden plank in front of her to determine where she’d position the saw later on. “You’ve accompanied plenty of deep space missions, right?”

“Sixteen,” Walter confirmed, cutting his own plank without any need for marks. He had offered repeatedly to cut hers as well but she had declined, insisting to do at least a share of the physical work and he hadn’t pressed further. To some level he understood that she didn’t want to feel excluded from the project her husband had left her, but far more relevant was the visible effect the work had on her: She looked focussed and determined, the red in her cheeks hinted at a healthy stimulation of her cardiovascular system and her smile came a little easier than it usually did these days. Captain Oram had once relieved her from duty to mourn the death of her husband. Walter knew now that forced idleness had a detrimental effect on her mental health. Better to keep her engaged.

“So, if any of those crews were half as bad as our lot, I’m sure you’ve got some anecdotes to share.” There it was again, that small, expectant smile. The fact that he had to disappoint was on the list of things he found distinctly _Not Preferable_.

“I don’t remember any of them.”

Her brow furrowed and the smile faded. His facial-recognition software informed him that she was confused. “What?”

“Weyland-Yutani was accused of using their synthetics to collect personal data from their employees. Even before the merger Weyland Industries developed technology which allowed them to record dream-sequences during cryo-sleep.” It was difficult to speak negatively about the company that had created him, but he pushed back against the programming that urged him to add that all data had been collected to assure greatest customer-satisfaction and was not sold to third parties.

“I remember that,” Daniels said, “It was a huge scandal a few years back.”

“They’re now obligated by law to wipe any personal memories from the hard-drive of an synthetic after a mission ended to protect the privacy of the crew.” When they left, the lawyers had been challenging the decision of the judges, but they had left the range of any Earth communication before the results came in.

A line appeared on Daniels’ forehead and her eyebrows lifted at an angle that told him that something about the information she had just received displeased her.

“All data necessary to fulfil my duties as expected remained intact, of course,” He reassured her.

If the information that memories had been erased from his hard-drive made her sad, the information that others had remained untouched should have made her happy, but the expression on her face proved otherwise, even as she returned to work. Humans were strange like that.

 

 

1

 

Walter picked up the towel from where Daniels had dropped it and folded it, carefully placing it next to her discarded sandals in the sand. He made a mental note to remind her to shake it out well before she used it to avoid irritating grains of sand on her skin.

“Walter!”

He looked up and his eyes immediately spotted her, following the sound of her voice. She was already swimming at an estimated distance of 21.6-21.8 metres from the shore, waving her arms at him while clearly too far out for her to find foodhold if she needed it. Walter felt a distinct sense of _Not Preferable_ \- Disconcerting.

“You’re stalling,” She yelled. His auditory sensors had to filter out the sound of the wind and the small waves to make out her breathless words. “Get in!”

Dutifully, he turned around and moved closer towards the water, his eyes focussed on where she was now lazily floating on her back. He stripped down to his boxer shorts - she had seen him naked before but that was under circumstances where his programming demanded nudity and without such priority, propriety won out. He folded his own clothes neatly and placed them out of the reach of the waves.

He was doing this for her, he reminded himself, before testing the temperature of the lake with the tip of his right foot.

23,7 C° water temperature. Air temperature 29,8 C°.

He had inspected the water over the course of two weeks before giving his approval for her to swim in it when hadn’t found any contaminants and the water itself was clean and clear. There were no swirls or currents and the mountains protected the water from strong winds.

There was no logical reason to object to swimming.

He was designed not to object to anything a human did, granted it didn’t endanger other humans or an objective of Weyland Yutani.

Gathering his resolve, he stepped forward, deep enough for the water to lick at his ankles. His sensors blared their usual warnings, informing him that the spaceship he should be on was filling with water, that something was very wrong with the plumbing and that the crew in grave danger. All unnecessary subroutines were shut down and the emergency state clamped down on his hard-drive, limiting his access to data to anything related to plumbing, water damage and first aid. Walter shut the alerts down and waited for the rest of his systems to reboot one subroutine after another.

Some Walter-units were trained lifeguards, specialised with ideal programming to fulfil their function but just like they’d be at a loss accompanying deep space missions, his programming wasn’t meant for swimming.

He took another, small step until the water reached to his calves, before locating Daniels. After 2,6 seconds of searching - he had to shut down the feeling of Emergency - her head appeared above water again, content and happy and not-drowning.

“That’s not deeper than you were yesterday,” She protested immediately, reminding him of their agreement that he’d go further every day. With no such subroutine available in his programming, she had decided to take it upon herself to teach him how to swim.

‘You always say the lake is dangerous,’ she had argued, ‘So what if something happens and you can’t help me?’

That had won him over, even if he could tell that her own safety was not her driving motivation - frustratingly, it almost never was, with humans - but she was right.

Saying that he hadn’t gone deeper in than yesterday was untrue of course - he would never deceive Daniels like that. He was 1,2 cm deeper than the last time, but he figured that by human standards it didn’t count as _significantly_ deeper.

He took another step until the water licked at his knees and his sensors alerted him that he had stepped on a rock. Carefully, he kicked the rock out from underneath his foot and looked expectantly at Daniels who only made a beckoning motion. Further.

Another step - the water was lapping at his thighs right above his knees now - seemed to assuage her. With a lazy thumbs-up she swam closer until the water became too shallow for her to swim and she waded towards him.

He took in the slight goosebumps covering her arms and legs and her elevated breathing but neither were outside normal parameters and she was smiling a smile he had rarely seen ever since her husband had died.

“You’re getting better,” She said happily as she flopped into the water right next to him to sit right in the waves, sitting cross-legged on the sandy ground with the water up to her neck now. “You know with the right training you could rival any Olympic swimmer, if you wanted. If I can ever get you to actually swim, of course.”

He knew these words were meant to encourage him to learn, but he wasn’t interested in rivalling anyone. Besides, synthetics weren’t allowed to participate in competitions.

She patted the water beside her, a sign for her to sit, and he did, however _Not Preferable_ the water rising up his body was, alerting his sensors one by one.

By the time he kneeled beside her in the water - this way, the water only reached to his sternum - the imaginary spaceship his programming was so concerned about was in deep crisis.

“May I ask you something, Daniels?”

“Of course.”

“You realise you could order me to learn, if you wanted to? All you would need to do is give the command.”

“If I did that, you wouldn’t be learning what I wanted you to learn. We’ll do it the proper way. The way I learnt. Not the programming way.”

It seemed illogical - he would learn exactly what she would tell him to learn - but experience told him that he was missing subtext here so he sat with her in silence.

So there was something else she wanted him to learn. Something he was missing entirely. Which meant he’d eventually fail to satisfy her without knowing what he was supposed to learn - maybe he was displeasing her already.

He could ask her, but if she wanted him to know, she could simply have told him - thus asking her would undermine whatever intentions she had in stall for him.

As they sat side by side, she wrapped her arm around his waist and pressed a soft kiss to the side of his face before finally resting her head on his shoulder.

She didn’t seem displeased.

“Why are you afraid of water?”

“I’m not afraid of water. I can’t be afraid of it.”

“But you don’t like it.”

“I’ve never objected to you drinking it,” He reminded her. In fact, fresh water was good and healthy when run through a filter for ideal hygiene and drunk from proper bottles. “Or showering. Or bathing. Or cleaning. Or washing. Or using it to clean the cabin or water the plants or-”

“But you object to swimming,” She interrupted his list.

“That’s because swimming can be dangerous.”

She chuckled breathlessly into his neck which he decided was an inappropriate reaction to being warned about potential threats to her life.

“I’m programmed to accompany deep space missions,” He added, to satisfy her curiousity. “I’m not designed to swim.”

Her eyes widened in horror.

“You’re…you’re not going to run full of water and short-circuit, are you? I won’t have to pull you out?”

“No. It’s the software, not the hardware. My sensors are calibrated to a certain environment - that of a spaceship. When I’m wading through water, all my subroutines are shut down and I’m overcome with the instinct to repair the plumbing lest everyone dies.”

Daniels had the decency to hold back an entirety of 7 seconds before she bursted out in laughter, the most honest he had heard from her in a long time.

His programming knew that humans could laugh for manifold reasons, some positive - joy - and others negative - mockery. Experience had taught that these two weren’t necessarily separate. Humans on friendly terms would tease each other to strengthen their bounds and after initial confusion - his programming hadn’t prepared him for any human regarding him as their friend - he had learnt to recognise this behaviour. Despite the additional challenge, he considered being regarded on such equal terms as _Preferable_.

“But...you once said you can deactivate your sensors. Can’t you do that now?”

“I can shut them down momentarily, but they activate the next time the stimulus is percepted. But I do learn. My body will grow used to it with time.”

She smiled.

“I’ll give you time then.”

Many things should have occupied his mind in the amiable silence that followed. He should have considered advising her to protect herself from the sun beating down on her shoulders. He should have offered to leave and prepare dinner.

And yet his processors were working to capacity focussing on the weight of her head against his shoulder, the soft caresses of her hand along his arm beneath the water or the slight brushes of their bodies when the weight of the waves nudged them against each other.

She occupied all his senses as he watched the droplets water clinging to her skin reflect the light of her sun and listened to the calm, steady beat of her heart and he realised that he _wanted_.

 _Want_ wasn’t an experience he had ever had before - or had any personal notion of - but he knew what it was, he knew that this feeling couldn’t be encompassed by any thousands of lines of code. It was foreign and yet tangible, abstract and yet he could feel it in his physical body, a sensation too contradictory for his sensors to decrypt. It was warm and cold, sharp and yielding and outside of any binary notion of _Preferable_ or _Not Preferable._

He knew he Wanted, but what it was he Wanted eluded him - he only knew that the strange vortex of different sensations revolved around her, the woman next to her and that he would take anything she was willing to give.

 

0

 

“You can use the bed if you want to, you know? You don’t have to just...sit there.”

Her hair was dishevelled and she was still blinking the sleep from her eyes as she padded into the living room where Walter sat on the couch and had been looking at the empty wall, as still as possible so that he wouldn’t disturb her sleep, for two hours, twenty minutes and thirteen seconds now.

He looked at her, taking in how the muscles in her throat contracted with a suppressed yawn and her hands played with the belt of her morning gown.

“I don’t need sleep,” He explained calmly.

“I just thought it might be more...comfortable,” She suggested.

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

She blinked but the motion wasn’t sluggish enough to be attributed to fatigue alone.

“You live here. You know that, right?”

Strictly speaking, he didn’t. He didn’t live anywhere due to the fact that he didn’t live at all, but he got her meaning. She was asking whether he knew that her cabin was the location he was currently assigned to.

“Yes.”

“You’re not imposing.”

“I understand.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“Would you like me to share your bed?”

Daniels brushed a hand through her messy hair - it was growing longer, he made a mental note to offer her to cut it when the opportunity arose.

“Just do what you feel like.”

Walter couldn’t possibly ‘feel like’ anything so the directive was unclear, but she didn’t offer any clarification.

Instead: “What do you usually do at night, Walter?”

This Walter could answer.

“I water the plants, filter fresh water for the next day, clean around the cabin, chop wood, make breakfast and then I wait.”

“You wait for what?”

“For you to wake up.”

The algorithms failed to identify her expression correctly, that strange mixture of a smile tugging at her lips and sadness in her eyes, no matter how often he saw it directed at him. He had often thought about asking her what it meant.

“Just think about it.”

 

1

 

They sat in silence for a while, Walter contemplating the strange notion of Want, Daniels thinking about whatever colourful things humans thought about, until she feigned a shudder and announced that she was getting cold.

He was on his feet before her, ignoring her giggle when he hurried towards the shore at a pace that - according to a remark muttered under her breath - reminded her of a cat.

Even if he could have, Walter mused, he wouldn’t have taken offence. Cats were far up on his list of creatures that he found _Preferable_. The hierarchy of Preferable things was usually determined by their usefulness at fulfilling an objective, but he hadn’t yet figured out what cats were useful for.

He picked up Daniels’ towel and shook any potentially irritating sand out before he held out for her to wrap into.

Instead she turned around and leant into his touch. He followed her wordless direction and toweled her off gently, only fabric separating his hands from the body they were wandering over.

He had done this a dozen times before without a second thought, but now her trust, her warmth, the weight of her body against his had his head buzzing with Want.

Walter knew the different emotions humans had in theory if not practice. He knew that ‘want’ was by definition the need or desire for something. And yet he hadn’t known what it was he wanted. And if touch and proximity was what he wanted, his need should have been satisfied now - and yet he wanted more.

More of her.

“Walter?”

Her eyes opened and she turned around to find out why he had stopped moving, his arms dropping to his side.

“Are you alright?”

Nothing was alright.

He was malfunctioning and it was wrong.

He wanted her and it was wrong.

He wanted more of her and it was wrong.

She had trusted him but she no longer could, because against any programming, he wanted. He wanted her…

 

0

 

It turned out, lying on a bed was _Preferable_ to spending the night sitting on a couch.

The experience had confused his sensors at first, the warmth and weight of the comforter above him, the softness of the mattress beneath and the slight prickling of the down inside his pillow unfamiliar.

Programming advised that it would be untoward to watch Daniels sleep beside him, but he couldn’t help but listen to her breath, the rustle of the fabric when she moved and the small sighs that escaped her throat when she dreamt.

He held still when her hand found his arm and her fingers gently wrapped around his wrist.

Before lying down, he had estimated the maximum amount of space her sleeping body would require to avoid infringing on it, but despite his efforts her body moved and squirmed and rolled beyond that space until the heat of her body was curled against his side with one of her arms wrapped around his waist and her head resting on his shoulder and soft breath puffing against his skin.

A strange warmth was tingling beneath his skin that hadn’t been picked up by his sensors but seemed to rise from the inside.

There was a new notion, to turn over to curl against her and wrap his arm around her body. It was as strong as any directive but it shouldn’t be there, it shouldn’t feel stronger than any thought inside his mind when there was no human who had given it.

Forcing his touch on any human - in their sleep no less, without reason or directive to do so - was against any of the guidelines ingrained into him.

He forced his body into stillness and waited.

For her to wake up.

 

1

 

If Daniels thought more of his lapse by the shore, she didn’t mention it.

Perhaps Tennessee’s spontaneous visit simply hadn’t given her the chance to bring it up.

Walter couldn’t decide whether it would be _Preferable_ or _Not Preferable_ to discuss his new feelings with her and that all by itself was disconcerting.

Telling her should have been _Preferable_ , because she deserved to know to make a fully informed decision whether she wanted to continue regarding and treating him as a romantic partner.

But if she knew that Walter had developed his own desire for her, that he now had his own interests, she might end their relationship. She might no longer feel safe around him. The part of him that wanted her estimated that risk as unacceptable. The idea of losing her sounded as _Not Preferable_ as solitude or decommission or human suffering or not having a directive.

“Why don’t you sit down with us?” Tennessee asked, accepting the plate Walter handed him. (Strictly speaking, the little animals Daniels and Tennessee had ‘fished’ weren’t fish at all but resembled amphibians on Earth, but apparently they appealed to the human palate and weren’t poisonous and ‘a barbeque is a barbeque, no matter which planet it’s on’.)

“I don’t eat,” Walter reminded him.

“But I know you sit.”

It was an indirect order and the strange, new feeling in his stomach gave him a jolt of warmth when Daniels patted the ground beside her, inviting him to sit beside her.

Walter didn’t intrude on the humans’ conversation. Even if people were interested in the opinions of synthetics, he didn’t have any on baseball. Instead he tended to the fire in silence. They had brought a heater too from the camp by the landing site and Walter frequently recommended its use over lightening an open fire since the oxygen content in the atmosphere of Oregai-6 was slightly higher than that on Earth and fires burnt higher and brighter here than humans were used to, but according to Tennessee, campfires were romantic.

Daniels and Tennessee laughed excessively at a story about a man who had lost hold of his bat which missed another man’s head by “no more than an inch, I swear!” - an accident that would have caused serious injury, so Walter understood their delight that the man had been spared.

Daniels made a miserable noise, upending her now empty bottle of beer.

“I’ll-” Before Walter could finish, a hand was on his shoulder, applying enough pressure to suggest she wanted him to remain seated.

“It’s fine.” She said, her voice slightly slurred, “I’ll go.”

He watched as she walked away, trying to assert whether she wasn’t too intoxicated to find her way around, but her gate was even and her movements focussed.

Tennessee followed his gaze.

“You’re a lucky man.” It wasn’t just the tone of male camaraderie but general awe.

“She’s not a lucky woman,” Walter stated. It was true. Daniels had lost her husband, her friends and was now living ostracized from her own kind in a cabin to protect a machine.

“She looks pretty happy to me.”

She wouldn’t be happy forever. Not with him.

“May I ask you something personal, Tennessee?”

“Sure.”

His programming reminded him of the legal implications of asking for data like that - but he pushed through it. Not now.

“You’ve had 5 serious relationships in your life.”

“How do you know that?”

“Weyland Yutani does background checks on all their employees.”

Tennessee grimaced. “Sure they do. What did you want to ask?”

“I realised that I like Daniels,” He began to explain.

“Well, I hope you like her - She’s your girlfriend.”

“I was created to serve. If I start having preferences of my own - it would defeat the purpose. It means I’m no longer fulfilling her wishes to make her happy, but because it pleases me. I can no longer guarantee that I’ll act solely in her best interest. I’m malfunctioning.”

Tennessee regarded him for a moment, as if scanning his face for nonverbal cues as Walter did so often with others. Then he sighed - evidently bracing himself for a more meaningful conversation than he had expected - and placed his beer in the sand.

“Listen. Walter,” He began and Walter listened, even through the 2,1 seconds of silence that followed. “You’re not human. That’s a matter of fact. You’re also one of my best buddies and not just by … ‘process of elimination’, if you want.” Tennessee’s face formed a tense smile at the last words, but Walter didn’t follow the impetus in his software to mirror it. Both Daniels and Tennessee had developed a certain sense of ‘gallows humour’ in the wake of the events on that planet far away. As a synthetic designated to deep space mission Walter had enough knowledge of human psychology to identify it as one of their symptoms of PTSD.

“But as a matter of fact, Walter, we’re wired differently. Quite literally in your case, no offence. Most of the time, I franky don’t know what’s going on up there in your head - what is going on that I don’t see and what I think I see that’s not actually going on. And I don’t know what should or shouldn’t be going on there. I’m a pilot. That’s all. And all I can tell you is that as a pilot and as a friend - I trust you.”

He started into the flames of the campfire for a moment, but by now Walter knew humans well enough to tell from tension in his throat and the furrow of his brow that he hadn’t finished speaking. He was thinking how to continue. Computing, in a way.

“I also know that Daniels trusts you. And she’s a far better judge of people than I am.”

Walter lowered his gaze. It was important not to seem confrontational - especially when he was being dangerously confrontational. He wasn’t created to challenge humans’ personal views. Another sign that something was seriously wrong.

“The last time we trusted an unstable synthetic, we lost almost the entire crew.”

“You think you’re going to murder everyone here, just because you realised that you might have had an emotion?”

“I’m designed to learn. When these new behaviour-patterns are reinforced as wished by humans, I might deteriorate further.”.

“You want me to tell you to stop liking your girlfriend then?” Tennessee asked, the upturned corners of his lips suggesting that the question was as sarcastic as it was rhetorical.

“It might help.” While Daniels was more and more at the centre of his attention the longer he kept away from other humans, their input into his development was still relevant and Tennessee was a member of the crew his programming still considered him assigned to. His words had weight.

“Well, I’m not going to do that.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“Would it help, if I promised you that if I ever find out that did you hurt her, I’ll send the entire colony security after you and I’ll personally disassemble you with a baseball bat?”

Walter shook his head. “It wouldn’t help at all.”

“Really?”

“We didn’t bring any baseball equipment to Oregai-6.”

For a moment, Tennessee looked dumbfounded. Then he burst out laughing, knocking over his beer with one waving hand but he didn’t seem to notice. His movements sluggish, he patted Walter’s shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie that the new sensation of wanting definitely approved of, but not with the same intensity as it did with Daniels.

Daniels - the sound of the bottles in her hand clinking together betrayed her even when the sand muffled the sound of her footfalls - greeted them with a pat to Tennessee's shoulder and a kiss to the side of Walter's face as she returned.

“What are you guys laughing at?” She asked happily, tutting at the sight of Tennessee’s spilt beer before handing him a new one.

“Nothing, nothing. Walter just told me about all the kinky stuff you two get up to.”

Daniels blinked, looking to and fro between Walter and Tennessee before sitting down in the sand between them. “Kinky stuff?” She asked, her tone giving away more than she had perhaps intended but not enough for Walter to recognise whether she was indifferent, amused or displeased.

Recognition flickered across Tennessee’s face. “Oh. Ohhh. I didn’t know that you two...that you didn’t…” He turned towards Walter. “Is it because you don’t have a penis? Because I told her. She just wouldn’t believe me.”

“I am fully equipped,” he began explaining helpfully.

Daniels snorted with suppressed laughter. “He’s messing with you.” She didn’t normally laugh like she did now and the question whether it was the alcohol or actual human companionship that alleviated her mood like that made something twist and squirm uncomfortably inside Walter’s stomach area.

She turned towards Tennessee. “We don’t ask you about your sex-life.”

“Yeah, because I don’t have one.”

They exchanged quips like that for a while and maybe Walter wasn’t the best judge of graphic humour, but he found they lost quality proportionately to the growing pile of empty bottles.

 

0

 

She weighed almost nothing, straddling his thighs, her physical strength infinitesimal compared to his, and yet he let her arrange him however she liked, yielding beneath her touch.

His sensors were buzzing with these new sensations. They had kissed before and she had always been generous with her touch, but this was different. He had known from the moment she had entered, dressed only in one of his sweaters that fell to the middle of her thighs. He never left his clothes just lying around - she couldn’t have grabbed it out of convenience. She must have picked it for a purpose. There was a message somewhere hidden in that piece of garment and he wished he could understand it. Understand what it meant to her. Daniels deserved someone who understood.

He would never feel what she was feeling when she kissed him with such tenderness, crawling onto the bed and on top of him, her finger trailing along the side of his face where even the deepest scars had faded.

For weeks now he had expected her to initiate sexual intercourse with him. He had aided the situation along, trying to dispel any doubts she might have as tactfully as possible. (Admittedly, when he had informed her of the full functionality of his penis, she had coughed up some of her breakfast coffee.)

He opened his mouth for her when she placed a kiss to his lips and tilted his head back when her mouth wandered down his throat, allowing her access.

Her teeth grazed against his false Adam’s Apple, but despite what might have been a threat in other circumstances there was no wrath in her eyes when they met his. He read joy from the wrinkles around her eyes and the dimples in her cheeks. Her pupils had dilated to 60% the size they should be with the light of the sunset streaming through the window above the bed, painting the room in red and gold.

Her hands made quick work of the buttons of his light shirt, revealing his smooth chest to the fresh air.

“You’re beautiful…” She whispered into his skin, pressing a kiss into his suprasternal notch.

“We are designed to appeal to a wide spectrum of customers.” The way her bottom lip twitched, he wondered whether he had said something wrong so he tried something different. “You are beautiful as well,” He assured her. “Completely without prior marketing research.”

She chuckled. “You say the sweetest things.”

At least he amused her.

“Would you like to see more?” She asked casually, her fingers trailing along his sides, warm and curious. His own hand was lying limp on the sheets beside his body and he forced it to remain still against his curiosity to explore her body like she did his.

“More?”

With a smile, her fingers hooked around his, lifting up his hand and placing it at the hem of his - now her - sweater.

Following her suggestion, he lifted up her shirt and slipped it over her head, tousling her short hair even more. Her hands slid along his arms until she snatched the shirt from his hand, carelessly tossing it behind her. He made a mental note to fold it and put it away after she had finished. Or fallen asleep. Whichever seemed more appropriate. He didn’t have any data about post-coital behaviour in humans.

“You can look at me.”

He did. He let his eyes wander down her body, taking in all the details. The tan her sun-starved skin had soaked up in these last weeks after years in cryo. The clear definition of muscle underneath her skin. The protrusion of the erect nipples, especially noticeable on her small breasts. The small scar on the left side of her abdomen, indicative of a appendicectomy during her childhood.

When she bent down to kiss him again, he could feel her smooth naked chest rub against his and the only thing separating the warmth between her legs from his skin was the thin fabric of his boxers.

“I don’t presume you remember whether...you’ve done this before?” She asked, her tone apologetic.

“I…” The strange half-knowledge filling his head was difficult to put into words that would make sense to her. “There are technical details available. I think I did have sexual intercourse before. I just can't remember the circumstances or partners.”

There was a strange wetness glistening in Daniels’ dark eyes that she blinked away quickly. The topic of his deleted memories always made her unhappy, but humans had a habit of broaching subjects that caused them distress. It was a trait that puzzled Walter.

“I don't think they were like you,” He contemplated out loud. With his memories missing he could only reconstruct them from the void they had left. None of the technical routines about sexual techniques that his hard drive procured contained data about responding appropriately to her displays of affection. “I think their interest was strictly limited to physical need and convenience.”

And perhaps that was wiser too, wiser than looking to find something in him that could never be there.

The gaping hole in his data on the subject was distinctly shaped like something _Not Preferable_. He didn’t like how a faint but resolute subroutine insisted he should switch offf tactile sensors and contract his collagen-based muscles to brace for impact.

Daniels hesitated, sitting up a little.

“You think...they went against your will?”

“I have no will.”

Something crossed her face, a quick series of expression that the algorithms identified as a progression from shock to denial to suspicion and fear.

“But you want this, right? This is not the same for you, it’s not…”

Walter considered it. He didn’t want it as much as he didn’t not want it.

But he knew what worried her. “It doesn’t upset me.”

She recoiled as if struck by an invisible blow, rolling off of his body, scrambling as fast as her limbs allowed.

“No...no, no no...I thought you wanted this. You said... You started going on about your penis in the middle of breakfast. I thought that was your way of telling me you wanted...this. Walter…”

“I thought you might feel hesitant about initiating sexual intercourse with me due to...technological concerns,” He explained. “I just wanted to assure you that I’m perfectly capable of all-”

“No. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Walter.”

Her distress was evident and very much _Not Preferable_. He knew of some that had perspired between her and David and decided that her belief that a synthetic could have independent sexual agency had to be based on that assault she suffered.

“You have nothing to apologise for,” He assured her. He had been careless.

“Do you mind if I stay here?” She asked, her voice hollow. “Or would you prefer if I left?”

“I’d prefer that you’d settle for the option that you find most advantageous to your well-being. But personally I'd like it if you stayed.”

“I took advantage of you.”

“That's what I exist for. Please do take advantage.” He tried a smile. He had been told that his smiles never lived up to the human original, a soulless baring of teeth but she had never seemed disconcerted.

This time on the other hand, she didn't return it, her only visible reaction a contraction of muscles in her throat as she swallowed. He watched her put on her pyjamas in quick, hurried movements - he pretended not to see her fingers tremble. This time, when she got in bed beside him and curled up beneath the comforter, for once she didn't take up all of her side and some of ‘his’, but still stayed as far from him as the bed allowed.

He almost thought she had fallen asleep, if her breathing pattern hadn't remained a bit too irregular. After 11 minutes and 04 seconds, she spoke again.

“What are you thinking about, Walter?”

“That would be inappropriate for me to answer.”

“Please tell me.”

“I'm debating whether to put away the shirt on the floor now or whether to wait until you are asleep.”

 

That night, she slipped out on quiet soles when he'd just begun feigning sleep. She didn't go to the bathroom or the kitchen and when he followed her, he found her in the living room instead, in the same place he'd spent the night so often, her hands folded around the metal nail she wore around her neck.

 

1

 

“You’re a sweet synthetic, Walter. Best I know, hands down,” Tennessee murmured, only held upright by Walter’s guidance. He would spend the night in the cabin. And most of the next day, judging by his level of intoxication. “Maybe I should get my own…’s good company. Better than bein’ alone. Anythin’s better…”

“Weyland-Yutani doesn’t deliver to Oregai-6,” Walter explained patiently, while helping the human to lie down on the sofa, covering him in one of Daniels’ spare-blankets. “Besides, we are far outside your budget.”

“You’re becoming a real brat, lately.”

“I apologise,” Walter assured him. “Good night.”

“Walter?”

“Yes?”

“Talk to her. Talk to...talk to Daniels. ‘s just...so many things I never told Faris. Just go...go and say. Say that you...that you…” If the rest of his words made any sense, it was swallowed by the pillow Walter had fluffed up for him when Tennessee buried his face in it.

“Thank you.”

He left, keeping his steps as silent as possible.

Tonight, there was no telling Daniels anything.  She wasn’t faring much better, stumbling alongside him when he led her towards the bedroom, her head resting on his shoulder and arms wrapped around his waist. The alcohol in her blood made her affectionate but none of her touches transgressed against her self-imposed limitations on sexual contact. He wondered whether the new, living warmth filling his stomach would like it better if she didn’t.

It had to be enough that she had overcome the hesitations she had had about merely touching him the first weeks after what he had come to call - The Night - (in his head only, of course. The Night was never mentioned between them again.

After her struggle with her shirt sent her stumbling against the closet, he helped her take off her clothes and get herself ready for bed, enjoying the spreading of affectionate warmth when even in her intoxicated state she found her way into his arms, burying her face in his neck and entangling their legs with a blissful sigh.

And yet. He wanted more.

 

0

 

Walter had no way of knowing whether he had ever made one of the humans he’d been assigned to cry before. The way the distress pierced through his subroutines didn’t feel familiar.

It was a failure.

Carefully, he placed a first foot in the water, forcing down the alarms and sending a signal to reboot all subroutines his body deemed unnecessary in a state of emergency.

He was created to serve. To make human lives easier. Not to cause them misery.

He was a failure.

Daniels was almost out of sight, even to his eyes, a small dot swimming further and further out. Even she had never reached the opposite shore before, always turning before reaching the centre of the lake, but with her furious strokes, she might now.

Over breakfast, she hadn’t mentioned the previous night and rather studied him in silence as if waiting for him to say something.

He had nothing to say.

He watched her dark head in the distance as she swam confidently, farther and farther away from him.

With another step, the water reached up this ankles and the alarms were shrieking again. The crew was in immediate danger.

There was no crew.

 

1

 

Daniels bounced back without a hangover.

(“‘s b’cause she’s young,” Tennessee had murmured into his coffee, “‘s easier when you’re young.”)

Dutifully, Walter had offered him his care until he felt better, but Tennessee preferred to wallow in his misery alone and in silence and murky lighting.

He’d almost rather wanted to stay with Tennessee in the dark cabin than face the consequences of being close to her when she insisted on teaching him to swim - ‘the proper way. Not the programming way.’

“To the waist,” She insisted. “At least try.”

Just another meter and he would be able to touch her, could stretch out his hands and track the path of glistening droplets of water on her skin.

He took another step, forcing down the blaring alarms once again, involuntarily glancing at her hands sliding through the water, hoping she’d extend them towards him, would touch him. Instead, with a few lazy strokes of her legs, she swam backwards just outside his reach, beckoning him further, but he found himself hesitating.

“Come and get me…”

Walter tilted his head 20° degrees to the left to indicate confusion. “Get you?”

She swam a little closer, just within his reach, but when he extended his hand for her, she retreated again.

“Get me,” she confirmed playfully. She was playing.

“You want to play catch?”

With a wink, she floated a few steps backwards.

He took after her and the alarms began again, calling him to protect the crew and he could feel his subroutines shutting down, but he didn’t reboot them, enjoying the singular clarity of only watching her swim and following after her with no complicated notions bringing disorder into clear directives. Imitating her, he moved faster and faster through the clear, fresh water. The first times she managed to evade him, each escape more narrow than the last when he applied the technique copied from her with his superior strength. She disappeared beneath the surface, only a blurry outline under the water and daringly, he allowed himself to follow her beneath the surface. While his silicone-based body had to fight harder against water displacement than hers, he had no need to breathe.

Finally he caught up to her, after she had resurfaced for air and swam underneath her, emerging to block her path and hold her by the shoulder.

“I ‘got’ you,” He informed her.

Her defeat didn’t seem to dismay her much and she laughed about some non-deductible joke only a human would understand, wrapping her arms around him and pulled closer towards him. It was logical, he assumed. Clinging to him like that, she didn’t need to keep herself over water. A smart way of saving energy. His own distraction at her proximity and the warmth of her body in contrast to the cold water around them were less logical.

Walter reactivated one of his subroutines to analyse his surroundings. They were now almost at the centre of the lake, the two nearest shores equally far away and the cabin only an indiscernible blurry little dot in a field of green, even with the greatest zoom his eyes could muster up.

Walter didn’t have a strict preference between company or solitude, but it was rare that he felt truly alone with Daniels as he did now. It was an irrational thought and he was aware of it, but he strangely, he often felt something between them, keeping them apart. An invisible presence, pulling his strings. He reminded himself that he was malfunctioning.

“Would you like it if I kissed you?”

If she was surprised to see him instigate a kiss on his own, she didn’t show it.

“I would like that very much.”

Messy, uncoordinated they found together, interrupted by the effort of keeping balance in the water, but her breathing was relaxed against the wetness of his face and her arms pulled him closer into their embrace. There was nothing separating them now. They were alone.

 

0

 

He didn’t know whether he’d ever fought before, but it didn’t matter.

He didn’t know whether any of them had to fight another synthetic for any other reason other than entertainment before, but it didn’t matter.

What mattered was the noise of Daniels’ steps on the stone floor as she ran, her laboured breathing moving further away.

It's your choice now, brother.

Daniels was safe.

Them or me?

Daniels was safe.

Serve in heaven...

or reign in hell?

Safe.

Which is it to be?

If she was safe the alarms shouldn’t be yelling at him, shrieking at him, alerting him that the crew was in danger.

 

1

 

Daniels fell into the grass beside him, breathing heavily despite the smile of joy on her face. She looked...triumphant, Walter found, but he couldn’t be sure. Back on dry land, he was still rebooting his subroutines one by one, including some involved with more detailed interpretation of human expressions.

“I’ve never swam across all the way,” She said, rolling over onto her back and brushing her hands through her short hair that was already beginning to dry in the sun.

“You did very well,” Walter assured her. “You have an amazing constitution.”

“I swam for Stanford when I was younger,” She explained and Walter didn’t remind her he already knew - anything Weyland Yutani had on her was stored inside his hard drive. He knew of all her trophies. He knew how she had once won first place with a sprained ankle.

Looking at her now, breathless and bright, it was impossible to be deceitful with her.

He sat up on folded legs, using what subroutines had rebooted by now to form a sentence. The want wasn’t holding him back now.

“Lately, I haven’t served you to my utmost capacity.”

She furrowed her brow, blinking. “What are you talking about? Everything’s great, Walter. You’re perfect.”

“I wasn’t as honest with you as I should have been.”

Despite her rapid breathing, she was fully focussed now.

“If this is about that night...it was my mistake. I told you it was.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it?”

Most subroutines were online now and Walter had greater capacity to choose his wording. “Lately. I’ve discovered changes within my programming. Glitches, maybe.”

“Glitches?” There was concern in her voice and she sat up too, so close that he could count the droplets of water sticking between the lashes of her eyes. One was threatening to fall into her eye, if he didn’t reach out to wipe it away. He forced his hand to remain in his lap.

“I found that there were moments when I wanted you. I’d never felt like that before. I never _felt_ before.” Now all subroutines were back online, introducing him to a new emotion he didn’t care to know. Regret. He shouldn’t have told her. She knew what a malfunctioning synthetic could do. She would reject him. But now that the truth was out there, there was no holding it back. “I want you now.”

Daniels wiped off some grains of sand sticking to her drying legs.

“You want me how?”

“Like you wanted me. Sexually.”

Her eyes flickered across his body, but there was caution in them as well as desire.

“Are you sure?”

“I want to touch you. I want to kiss you. I want to sleep with you.” Programming sent soft alarms, reminding him that such desires were sign of malfunctioning. Voicing them even more so. “I shouldn’t want it. I shouldn’t want to instigate anything like this.”

Daniels considered. “Is it your programming that says you shouldn’t want this?”

“Yes.”

“The same programming that tells you, you can’t go swimming, because there shouldn’t be water on a spaceship? Because we’re not on a spaceship anymore. Rules have changed.”

In a timeframe that must have seemed infinitesimal to her, his mind came up with 34 possible interpretations of her words, 12 of them befitting the context, 3 of them possible based on her intonation and one probable judging by her emphasis of the word changed.

If she had noticing him pausing for thought, she didn’t mention it.

“I guess….seeking sexual contact from any assigned crew members would be considered workplace inappropriate behaviour,” Walter conceded. “But your employment has been terminated.”

He felt daring, reaching for her hand on his own account, but she didn't pull away and the want inside his chest erupted with warmth when she gave his fingers a light squeeze.

His programming offered no guidance as to the details of sexual intercourse bar the strict technicalities, so he tried for an expression of neutral earnesty  while he let his hand wander up her arm, watching the fine hair there rise in response to his touch. A smile was hidden in the slightest deepening of the dimples in her cheeks - a smile that broke free when she studied him studying her.

With the tip of his finger, he mapped  a faint scar near the crook of his arms, 4,2 cm in length. It was pale and only stood out now that the rest of her skin wore a tan worth weeks of sunlight.

"What happened?"

Daniels couldn’t hold back her chuckle any longer.

“You need to know that now?”

Walter lifted his hand immediately.

“Am I being inappropriate?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. - Do you know what roller-skating is?”

Walter searched his hard-drive, but didn’t find an entry and shook his head. Whatever it was, it didn’t commonly happen on deep space missions.

“It was a sport - over a hundred years ago. You have these little wheels under your shoes and drive around.”

“That sounds like a dangerous and inefficient means of transportation.”

Despite - or perhaps because of - the ridiculousness of the image his lacking imagination produced, he couldn’t help but feel a spark of curiosity. Shoes with wheels. Sometimes the simplest concepts humans came up with were the most innovative. Creation was a gift.

His fingers found that small, white outline on her arm again, caressing it gently.

“I found them in an old shop and wanted to try it - I thought it would be easy, until I drove right into some wire and couldn’t stop.”

Walter rubbed over the small, white line with his thumb, feeling the contrast of the slight roughness of the scar against the smoothness of her skin.

“Why didn’t you have it removed?”

She quirked a brow at him.

“Does it bother you?”

Walter shook his head. “Of course not. But humans are…” (vain) “particular about their looks. I thought it might bother you.”

Scars were memories etched into skin. Even when removed with laser, a small pale outline remained. They couldn’t be erased. Walter’s wounds closed without the slightest trace like his memories did, leaving him the same blank canvas every time.

He glanced at her for permission before removing her simple grey bikini (Weyland Yutani-issued), revealing the sensitive skin underneath, still damp from the wet fabric.

He could feel her hard nipples against his chest when she leant forward for a languid kiss.

One of her hands wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling towards her as she lowered herself down into the grass, the slight pressure of her fingers guiding him on top of her. One of her hands fumbled with the waistband of his swimming trunks, slowly pushing beneath it to explore his limp member beneath.

She broke their kiss.

“Please tell me you want this.” The stranger was there again and not just in the concern in her eyes, not just in the sudden stiffness of her muscles.

“I do.”

As if to assure her, he placed a kiss on her now closed mouth and another on her chin. She tilted her head back to expose her neck when he kissed his way down the soft skin there, feeling the accelerated rhythm of blood pumping through her jugular beneath it.

Kissing his way down her chest, he could taste the calcium contents of the lake and analyse its ph-value on his tongue, but even with his limited understanding of appropriatete sexual interaction, he figured she wasn’t interested in such data now.

It was more fascinating to watch her muscles contract when his lips closed around her left nipple. He hadn’t applied much pressure or suction and when the same treatment on the right breast elicited the same result plus his name whispered in a low tone, he figured she was what people considered sensitive.

Her legs spread ever so slightly as his kisses ventured lower, just a twitch of her knees against his sides. Playing with the waistband of her bikini bottom and placing a kiss right above her hipbone, grazing it just slightly with his teeth, the magnitude of this endeavor came crashing down on him.

He had no programming and no accessible experience to prepare him for this - or to assure her satisfaction. He glanced up at her.

“I can see you overthinking this.”

With more flexibility than he had come to expect in humans, she wiggled out of her bottoms, muttering an apology when her knees bumped into his chest in their tangle of limbs.

Her legs fell open beneath him, unfolding before him the last part of her body he hadn’t as of yet mapped.

Part of his functions was providing medical care, so at least in theory he was well-acquainted with the female anatomy. He tried putting that knowledge to use when he buried his mouth in the concavity of soft flesh surrounding her entrance. He licked up the narrowing slit of her vulva until his tongue found the sensitive nub nestled there. A little suction applied to the swollen bundle made the legs pressed against his sides twitch and a hand found the back of his head.

The synthetic muscles in his neck stiffened, inexplicably preparing for pressure, but all her fingers did was brush through his hair, caressing him.

He nosed through her wet slit before placing a kiss right on her clit, applying the lightest bit of suction, earning himself a helpless sigh and a light tug on his hair.

“That...do that again…”

He did, applying more suction this time and her helpless gasp filled him with a new, different kind of warmth that he had never felt before.

He dared to experiment, altering the angle of his fingers, the pressure of his tongue and the rhythm of the movements of his jaw.

Tenderly, he let two fingers wander along the inner lips of her vulva, following their natural path towards her entrance and pushing in slowly.

He lightened the slight pressure of his tongue against her clit when he found that ridged part of her skin inside her, but her back arched nevertheless and the tips of her fingers dug into his scalp. He thought he heard his name in her drawn-out moan before she muffled it with the back of her hand.

“This is…this is…you’re amazing…Walter.” She writhed beneath his touch, shuddering almost violently. Some of the subroutines were sending harmless notions of alarm, pushing him to inquire if she was in pain, but his sensors had identified the tone of her voice. Bliss.

“Wait.”

Breathless bliss.

“Stop…stop, stop.”

He halted immediately, withdrawing his fingers and lifting his mouth. Her body didn’t cease its squirming, she followed his fingers with a small thrust, as if involuntarily missing his touch inside her.

“Not like this. I want you inside me when I come.”

Walter glanced at his fingers, glistening with her juices.

“Not that part,” She corrected with a smile. “I want all of you. If that’s what you want, too.”

Walter nodded.

Without a circulatory system, the erection he instigated was nothing more than the hardening of silicone-molecules and yet he couldn’t remember ever having felt more human, the pleasure was real, the lust was real, Daniels warm body pressed against his was real.

Her legs wrapped around his torso, her movements strong enough to actually move him, but he yielded when she moved to roll them over, allowing her to turn him over and straddle his chest.

They shared a kiss, the deepest and longest they ever had. He felt her and he tasted her, this kiss was unmistakably hers and he had never felt her like he did now, with her tongue caressing his, her hands dishevelling his hair, her skin, her smell, her juices.

He tried to recapture her lips when she drew away, but reached her for nothing more than a brush of lips.

She slid down his body and a hand wrapped around his member – and even if his erection wasn’t real, the pleasure felt real, real enough when she guided him inside of her, her warmth engulfing him.

She set her own pace, languid but insistent. She ground against him and he could feel her inner muscles contract around him each time she rolled forward and the head of his cock brushed against that sensitive spot inside her body.

Her hands explored his body, caressing his chest, rolling his nipples between too gentle fingers and kissing all the erogenous zones a human would have. Walter’s bodies had no such perks, but he could amplify the sensitivity of his tactile sensors until her touch burned on his skin and its warmth sunk deep into his artificial flesh.

She was close, she had already been close when she had guided him inside her and her movements became irregular now, her thrusts faster and her breathing more shallow. Her fingers curled, digging into his arms as she shuddered through her orgasm, his name on her lips.

He couldn’t follow her there - couldn’t feel what she felt -but instead he felt a different climax of his own. He was designed and created to serve humans and anything that brought them pleasure was high on the list of things he found preferable. Never in his conscious memory had he seen such bliss on a human face as he saw on Daniels’ now. This was very _Preferable_.

It was strange to think of her as beautiful - not that he didn’t know how well she met the human criteria for attractiveness - it was just that he never had much of sense for it. But now there was something hidden away in his subroutines, piecing the symmetry of her face, the healthy flush of her skin and the sparkle in her dark eyes together into something more than mere sensorial input, something he knew he’d never see enough of. It felt like a stranger looking through his eyes, whispering to Walter what he saw and his words formed poetry.

With his single, remaining hand he pulled her into a kiss, soft and languid and completely unable to express all he saw when he looked at her and yet she sighed into his kiss.

Her relaxed body settled on his chest and they lay like that for a long time.

He watched the light of the sun breaking in one droplet of water in her hair, painting the colours of the rainbow onto her skin, only to roll down her cheek and drop onto his chest where she kissed it away.

 

D

 

Even as he scrubbed her off his skin, her words were still inside his head, to deep for the water to reach.

“You’re good at this. Maybe there is a future for you once I take over the company.”

He could feel her sweat and saliva and juices on his skin, burning and biting as if try to eat through his skin. Her face had remained disdainful, even as she came with his mouth between her legs.

“I can send you to entertain investors in their hotel rooms. Or find you a street corner. What do you think my father would say about that?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t, with her hand on the back his head holding him in place.

He thought it was unhealthy to contemplate one’s parents during intercourse. He contemplated the way she emphasised the word ‘my’. He wondered how quickly her father would remove her from his will if he were to find out about this.

“But then, I looked forward to disassembling you for such a long time. I thought I’ll keep your head in a glass on my desk. Don’t really need the rest of you, do I?”

His face in the mirror looked as it always did - a perfect mask, neutral and inoffensive in its attractiveness. But there was a wrongness about it that he couldn’t place.

Without a gag reflex - some sacrifices had to be made with a mouth designed to scan for toxins - he couldn’t simply induce vomiting. Instead he brushed his teeth methodically with a new brush generated by the 3D-printer and emptied the box of mints he hid beneath her sink for these nights, covering her taste where he couldn’t wash it away.

 

1

 

“Walter?”

He flinched away from the hand cupping his cheek out of nowhere until he recognised the familiar voice and the face hovering above his. “Are you okay? You looked like you were sleeping?”

“I think I dreamt,”

Daniels blinked.

“You had a dream?” She asked. “A nice one, at least?”

“Not particularly.”

She shrugged almost apologetically, a movement he could feel where her body was lying on top of his. “Sorry about your first time then. But there are plenty of good ones, trust me.”

“I’m not sure. It was more of a memory.”

“One of the missing ones? Are they coming back?”

“I’m not even sure it was _my_ memory.”

His hand was wrapped around her waist, fingers curled into the small of her back. Not forceful enough to limit her movements and yet he worried that she might feel confined. He couldn’t bring himself to remove his hand. He liked the warmth of her naked body against his skin.

“In my dream I was thinking about a woman. And now I realise that I know her face. I know who she is.”

“You know her then?”

“Her name was Meredith Vickers. She was the daughter of Peter Weyland.” Even if he hadn’t seen her face to face in his memories, he had shared the thoughts and the knowledge of their protagonist and her face had hovered on their surface.

“Was?” She repeated. “You mean...she’s no longer…”

“She was aboard the Prometheus. She died three years before I was activated.”

He could see a thought flashing across her face - she must have made the mental calculation of his age. It made sense that his relative youth would offend her - she tended to humanise him. He refrained from informing her that despite his theoretic immortality he was older than the average synthetic due to the safety of his assignment. Most synthetics had occupations that were too dangerous for humans and fell victims to workplace accidents - safety measures had been greatly reduced in jobs that no longer employed humans.

 

 

They walked home together in amiable silence, Walter’s thoughts still on the face that had stared back at him through the mirror in his dream. The way around the lake was longer than the way through it, leaving him with enough time to contemplate the inconsistencies of his vision. The sun was beginning to set by the time they saw the outline of the cabin from across another small bay.

Tennessee had already left  when they got home, leaving them only a note that he’d call and that he had left them some food and other necessities he brought with him from the colony.

That night they had sex again and it was more playful this time and more joyous perhaps with her laughter brightening his night and the warmth of her skin chasing away any further memories.

He knew he should tell her about the other details of his dream - it was his duty and nothing was more important than duty - but it was also the duty to keep humans happy and satisfied and she clearly was, wrapped in his arms like that, laughing and shuddering with pleasure. He would no longer see her this happy if he told her about the dream in which he saw himself in the mirror with blond hair and the minute markers of a previous model.

He didn’t want to tell her and for once he did what he had feared he would ever since he first noticed these strange feelings of want for her:

He followed the objective that he preferred.

He preferred her in his arms.

 

D

 

               _“Lieutenant Lawrence, sir, is not your military_

_adviser.”_

_“But I would like to hear his opinion.”_

_“Damn it, Lawrence! Who do you take your_

_orders from?”_

_“From Lord Feisal in Feisal's tent.”_

 

1

 

The orange juice he made for her wasn’t made of oranges but of concentrate - but he had learnt that Daniels didn’t mind a somewhat artificial taste in her mouth.

He had only started on her eggs when a signal came from the radio station in the living area of their cabin. The radio station was their only connection to the colony for emergencies (in theory) and Tennessee and Daniels exchanging amusing anecdotes (in practice).

“Please come in, this is Walter speaking.”

“It’s me,” Tennessee opened and while it wasn’t a sensical opening persé, it didn’t matter. He was the only one who ever called them out here. Walter noticed that the human sounded strangely breathless. “You’re in trouble. You need to leave now.”  
  
One of the short-comings of the English language was - in Walter's humble opinion - the lack of a differentation between singular and plural _you_.

Over Tennessee’s agitated voice and the soft hiss of static that always accompanied the signal out here, Walter’s auditorial sensors picked something up - not from the radio but from outside the cabin.

The sound of vehicles. It was difficult to determine the number, but Walter estimated about seven. No. Correction. Eight.

“I can hear cars.”

“They’re coming. Walter, you need to leave, now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you didn’t do it, but I couldn’t convince them. They won’t believe me! They're after you!”

Walter removed the pan with the eggs from the cooker and turned it off.

“Is there any danger to Daniels?”

“There will be, if she reacts like I’ll think she do when they take you.”

That was the only thing that mattered, in the end. Walter had always accepted that one day, they would _take_ him. Preferably, it would happen long after the end of Daniels' natural life, when he'd be forced to live alone out here without an objective. The new feelings he had found inside himself rebelled against the mere idea of letting them take him from her, of being alone and useless and kept apart from what - from whom - he _wanted._ The thought of losing her was a physically entity, a white hot blade cutting through his innards.

“Thank you, Tennessee. I'll take care of it on my own then. Walter out.”

On the mark of his words, the radio stationed turned off. Walter placed the eggs on Daniels’ plate, arranging her bacon and tomatoes beside it before switching off the stove and before leaving through the front door with a last glance behind. There was still laundry in the basket by the stove, but he didn’t have time to take care of that now. Should have done it last night. The flowers needed watering, but by now Daniels should know the schedule.

He closed the door behind him as gently as possible. It had a tendency to creak and it might wake her up.

He walked slowly along the shoreline towards the noise of cars rolling closer. He counted 9 now, two of them probably plated judging by their weight.

His diagnostic system couldn’t identify the strange sensation coiling inside his stomach area - it wasn’t a technical defect and he had no experience to help him place it. He hadn’t felt that way when the solar eruption had hit the Covenant and Mother had alerted him to the damage to the cryo-pods. He hadn’t felt it when one of David’s creatures had ripped his hand or when he’d realised that one of the creatures had made it back onto the Covenant. He hadn’t felt it lying in the decommission unit, waiting for Daniels to press the button. He didn’t fear his end. But he didn’t like uncertainty.

Finally the vehicles arrived, dark and uniform and heavy, surrounding him in a semi-circle with the shoreline in his back.

Walter watched calmly as men and women in dark battle-gear jumped out of the vehicles, each a Weyland-Yutani issued NSG 23 Assault Rifle, he noted. A bullet to the head would be enough to penetrate his skull and terminally damage his main-processor.

“Hands behind your head!” One of the men barked. Walter recognised him as Colonel Ethan Burke who had preferred a colonisation mission in the middle of nowhere over a court-martial for corruption and insolence. “Lie down and hands behind your head!”

“Of course,” Walter assured him calmly and complied immediately, pressing his remaining palm against the back of his head and slowly moving to lie down in the sand. The presence of humans should be a positive experience to him, high up on the list of _Perferable_ things. And yet the usual state of attentiveness and compliance mixed with a new sensation bubbling inside him, something bitter and ugly and furious rising up inside him at the thought of never seeing her again.

He only wished he hadn’t flinched when he heard her voice.

“What’s going on here?” Daniels yelled, her steps moving closer towards him at as fast a speed as he knew she could manage. He estimated her current distance at about 4,8 meters from his distance - well within the circumference of the semi-circle that had formed around him. He didn’t dare moving. If they opened fire, odds were high that they’d hit her as well.

“What are you doing?!”

“He’s coming with us.”

“That’s not an explanation, Colonel Burke!”

“Something has happened.”

 


End file.
